Former Labour MP Bill Rammell and GB News host Nana Akua have clashed over Prime Minister Keir Starmer's newly announced plans to send refused asylum seekers to overseas "return hubs".
The heated exchange centred on comparisons between Starmer's proposal and the previous Conservative government's Rwanda deportation scheme, which Labour scrapped upon taking office last July.
Former Labour MP Bill Rammell said: "I think this is really worth pursuing, because this offshore processing of people who’ve failed the asylum process gives us a means to remove them from the country. It will act as a deterrent. This is not the same as Rwanda."
Nana asked: "Why? Rwanda was a deterrent."
Former Labour MP Bill Rammell said Rwanda "didn't work"
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He added: "It also didn’t work as a deterrent, because only about 100 people would have been removed."
Nana fumed: "It hadn’t started yet. It hadn’t started! It was working. It was scalable. It was worth the estimates."
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Rammell responded: "It wasn’t scalable. That was the maximum."
Nana said: "But the point is, it was a deterrent. We had Patrick Christys interviewing migrants who were waiting for Keir Starmer to take office so they could cross the Channel and that’s from their own mouths, saying they were put off by Rwanda."
Rammell replied: "I don’t think it was ever going to be a long-term deterrent."
Nana countered: "You don’t know, do you?"
The debate comes as Starmer revealed plans to send asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal routes to remain in the UK to foreign detention centres in third countries.
The Prime Minister made the announcement during a trip to Albania, though the Balkan nation has ruled out participating in such a scheme, with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama stating his country was already engaged in a similar process with Italy.
The Prime Minister told GB News that officials had begun formal negotiations with potential host countries but refused to reveal which ones.
Downing Street confirmed the plan would target failed asylum seekers who are using "stalling tactics" such as claiming to have lost documentation or starting families to avoid deportation.
Critics of Starmer's approach have drawn parallels with the Rwanda scheme he previously dismissed as a "gimmick"
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Starmer's spokesperson rejected suggestions that Rama's refusal to participate had caught them by surprise, saying they were aware beforehand that Albania had no interest in hosting a UK return hub.
The UN refugee agency has endorsed the idea of return hubs, which Downing Street noted was significant given that the UN had intervened against the Conservative government's Rwanda scheme, contributing to it being ruled unlawful.
The Netherlands is reportedly in negotiations with Uganda about establishing similar facilities.
Critics of Starmer's approach have drawn parallels with the Rwanda scheme he previously dismissed as a "gimmick" before scrapping it immediately after entering office in July.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called Starmer's Albania trip "an embarrassment", questioning: "What was the point of this entire visit?" after Rama made clear there would be no UK return hubs in Albania.
